


By the Seaside

by trashwriter



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, armin's hair is beauty, marine biology ftw, no sea turtles were disturbed in the making of this fanfic, where jean has a giant crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 07:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6145873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashwriter/pseuds/trashwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Armin is a grad student volunteering at a marine lab and Jean is a merman with a crush the size of the Bering Strait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Seaside

Armin parked the ATV just inside the curve of the cove and tried futilely to hold in the massive yawn that threatened to unhinge his jaw. He paused to take a long gulp of coffee from the thermos that Mikasa had filled for him on her way to the gym, and zipped his windbreaker up the extra two inches so that he could tuck his chin into it, because at ass o’clock at night and the cove was darn, freaking cold.

Still yawning Armin trudged down to the beach proper, flicking the tag that marked off Hanji’s quadrant of the beach for good luck.

He was meant to be tagging nesting sea turtles, and entering data about previously tagged turtles and while he was here he needed to try and get a few good useable samples for his own thesis project. Then maybe he’d sleep in the field lab for a few hours since Hanji was away at a conference and come back out to get fried while helping Eren take the afternoon samples in exchange for lunch.

That sounded pretty fair to him and he fired off a quick text to Eren requesting thai food from that place along the highway that they both likes before slipping his phone into his breast pocket and starting the careful grid-search for the turtles in question.

Now, because it was approaching three o’clock at night (or in the morning technically) and Armin was operating on barely any sleep and shivering in the costal breeze while trying to scribble out some coherent observations that weren’t just babbling semi-poetic wonder at the majesty of the sea turtles or the fact that they let him get so close, he could perhaps be excused for not noticing the mer until it was practically on top of him.

As it was, the creature asked: “What are you doing?”

And Armin jolted to his feet in surprise from where he was poking at the edge of what was probably a crab burrow with his pencil and promptly fell on his ass in the icy cold water.

“Rose, Maria, and Sina above that is freaking cold!” Armin hissed scrambling back to his feet, promptly and with very little grace.

“You’re not very coordinated are you?” said the mer, “Not that I’d be much better if I had to operate with those weird legs, but I don’t know, you’re kinda pretty so I thought you’d be more graceful.”

“Sorry,” said Armin a bit faintly, “I’m not usually this bad but I haven’t slept for more than a couple hours at a stretch this week, I’m only on my first coffee and I’m not entirely sure I’m not hallucinating you. And did you just say you think I’m pretty?”

“Ah yeah, well, yeah, for a human anyway,” said the mer, speckles of bioluminescence lighting up his handsome if slightly alien face in something that Armin thought was probably equivalent to a blush.

“Well, thank you, then,” said Armin feeling his own face heat up, as he tried to smooth back a few errant strand of blond hair, “You’re quite beautiful as well.”

And that was an easy observation to make. The mer was as sleek and well-muscled as any Olympian swimmer and arms, neck, and lazily undulating tail were visible in all their matte black and whiskey gold glory. He was spotted like a leopard or a whale shark and long, just big. And of course his face was just unfairly attractive featuring a wide mouth and high defined cheekbones.

The honest compliment seemed to please the mer, as he wiggled a bit in the surf to beach himself a little more and grinned wide and honest, and a little creepy considering the mouthful of pointed teeth designed for tearing and shredding.

“You think I’m good-looking?”

“I know you’re good looking,” Armin said, inching a little closer himself, and unable to keep the blatant fascination out of his voice, “And so do you, flashing your tail like that, you’re all but outright asking me to stare.”

Armin had done a half-credit on sentient marine mammals, and his final project had been on regional variants on mating behaviour in Atlantic mer, so he felt pretty confident in saying that this mer had approached him because he had whatever the mer equivalent of a crush was.

“Like you’re one to talk, always putting your hair up showing off your neck and shoulders like that,” purred the mer, “I bet all the humans tell you how pretty you are all the time, you must have mates in every cove.”

Armin flushed a bit, it was true that by mer standards his long hair and elegant neck would be considered attractive but he wasn’t really used to thinking about himself in those terms.

“Me, no chance,” he said with a laugh that was thankfully only a little bit bitter, “Humans aren’t exactly lining up to mate with the frantically busy nerd who always smells like salt and decomposing marine life and spend all his time walking up and down the same stretch of beach or squinting at water samples.”

“Morons,” snorted the mer. “Can’t see the treasure through the barnacles.”

“And how would you know that?” asked Armin, inching forward a little more and then sinking into a crouch so that he and the mer were more or less face to face.

“You come out here a lot,” said the mer, slowly, the spots of bioluminescence flaring bright again, “Your hair catches the moonlight when it’s clear sometimes and it looks like silver sea grass. Can I…”

Armin caught his lower lip between his teeth and nodded faintly, pulling his hair tie out and letting his eyes droop to half-mast in helpless pleasure as the mer ran combed the tips of his claws gently through the cornsilk-fine strands.

“So soft,” he said faintly awed, cupping Armin’s jaw in his other hand and leaning in to nuzzle his nose against Armin’s cheek.

Carefully Armin brought his own hand, half-frozen and nearly useless as it was to drag the pads of his fingers over the nearest smattering of leopard-like spots, hardly able to believe that he had to chance to feel the silky smooth glide of the mer’s warm suede-like skin under his fingertips.

Mer hardly ever interacted with humans for all that some species mimicked their languages and mannerisms, only a few of the most renowned marine biologists in the country could claim to have seen a mer up close let alone talked to one. Most of the information they had on mer was gathered second hand from accounts from those humans who were taken as mates.

Just then Armin’s phone let out a shrill chirp and mer and grad student both jolted jerking their hands back into their own personal bubbles with near identical sheepish expressions.

“I have to get back to work,” Armin said.

The mer let out a disappointed croon, “Would it be okay if I came to see you again sometimes?”

“Any time,” said Armin, honestly, “I’d love to talk to you some more. Maybe go swimming together, if you like?”

“Yeah?” asked the mer, looking hopeful.

“Yes. Definitely. You know the floating thing we have anchored of the point of the cove?”

“Yeah, that weird not-boat, what about it?”

“Just ask for me there, any time, even if I’m not around one of the other grad students should be able to get a hold of me. Ah, my name’s Armin by the way, what’s yours?”

The mer gave him a wry look and trilled a complicated vocalization that Armin couldn’t hope to replicate with human vocal chords even if he wasn’t practically tone deaf, “I’ve got a human name though, it’s Jean. You can just call me that.”

“Jean,” he said, testing it out.

“Armin,” the mer all but purred, with a delighted little flick of his tail.

And Armin hadn’t really thought about being attracted to a mer before except in that abstract way you did when reading grossly unrealistic romance novels or stumbled upon weird CGI porn, but as of right now he thought it was safe to say that between Jean’s voice and delightful musculature that he could check the box labelled xenophilia and leave it there.   

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a tumblr prompt~~
> 
> I had wanted to get back into writing snk fic and Hoff prompted me with this lovely and it of course spiraled out of control, not 100% satisfied with the ending but I hope you all enjoy anyway.


End file.
